This past Thursday was as strange a day as I've ever spent in my life...
After last January's humungous ice storm [see
http://ozarque.livejournal.com/573430.html and
http://ozarque.livejournal.com/573613.html ], we immediately bought a much bigger and more powerful generator than the little one we'd had before. George put in a lot of advance time doing sub-assemblies so that he could hook it up more quickly, and that was wise of him. But getting it done meant that he had to turn off all the electric power to our house, which in turn meant that Sheba and I would have been without lights, water, heat, and bathroom facilities while he worked.
In a city, we'd just have rented a motel room for the day, but where we live there are only two motels and both of them are permanently rented by local workers. So that was not a possibility. He could have taken us to my daughter's place in Fayetteville, but that would have added four hours of driving to an already-long task. That made no sense. The obvious thing to do was for Sheba and I to spend the day at Michael's mobile home, right there on our property, with all the necessary mod cons. Bathrooms. Furnace. Refrigerator. Running water. And that is what we did.
George started the job at about nine a.m., and finished at two p.m. And Sheba and I were very comfortable. We had our lunch in the refrigerator, I had plenty of stuff to read, plus my PDA with all its games. We took one of Sheba's little beds, and some of her blankets and toys, and bowls of dry dog food and water. All was well.
But it was
so very strange. To be in Michael's house, surrounded by a lot of his things, made it so very hard to believe that he is gone forever. So many places where I'd seen him, so many times; I knew it was irrational, but I kept feeling as though I'd look up and he'd be there.
I had worried that Sheba might spend the day hunting for Michael, because his scent was everywhere; that would have been hard for me to watch. It didn't happen. I lay on the couch and read, and she lay curled up beside me the whole time, tucked in under one of her blankets. She wasn't any more interested in exploring and searching than I was, and I was grateful for that.
It was the adult thing to do, and it's wonderful that we now have a generator that will let us run all the electric stuff at our place if we get power outages again this year. It's wonderful that George, who wired our place himself when it was built, knows all about working with electricity and could do the job on his own.
But I am so glad that day is over.